“The Plantation Mistress challenges and reinterprets a host of issues related to the Old South. The result is a book that forces us to rethink some of our basic assumptions about two peculiar institutions—the slave plantation and the nineteenth-century family. It approaches a familiar subject from a new angle, and as a result, permanently alters our understanding of the Old South and women’s place in it.” —Eric Foner, History Book Club Review
“Clinton has assembled many interesting quotations from old letters and diaries to support her belief that women in the antebellum South were generally overworked, often unhealthy, and little freer than their slaves.” —Atlantic Monthly
“One can be grateful that the recent emphasis on the study of women’s history has encouraged this much-needed work.” —Christian Science Monitor
Preface: Hidden Lives, xi
Chapter I: Women in the Land of Cotton, 3
Chapter II: Slave of Slaves, 16
Chapter III: Circle of Kin, 36
Chapter IV: The Day to Fix my Fate, 59
Chapter V: The Moral Bind, 87
Chapter VI: The Fallen Woman, 110
Chapter VII: Equally Their Due, 123
Chapter VIII: Precious and Precarious in Body and Soul, 139
Chapter IX: Every Woman Was an Island, 164
Chapter X: The Curse of Slavery, 180
Chapter XI: The Sexual Dynamics of Slavery, 199
Chapter XII: Foucault Meets Mandingo, 223
Appendix A, 232
Appendix B, 239
Abbreviations of Archives Referred to in Notes and Bibliography, 243
Notes, 245
Bibliography, 295
Index, 324
